COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
E-mail Landed Truth Project on Pentagon's 'Credible'
Threat List
Tony Doris, Palm Beach Post
April 24, 2006
LAKE WORTH — With the zap of a single e-mail, a group
of graying peaceniks known as The Truth Project was
catapulted into the clutches of the mightiest military
power on earth.
The group and its activities — mostly handing out
leaflets at local high schools and meeting at Lake
Worth's Quaker Meeting House — were branded a
"credible" potential threat by the Pentagon, its
existence posted in a secret electronic gallery of
suspected terrorists.
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The Pentagon has since apologized — but why The Truth
Project's two dozen or so middle-age members were
considered a credible threat has remained a mystery.
Unlike other, more visible protest groups, they worked
within government channels — politely requesting Palm
Beach County school system permission to spread their
message on campus.
The military now says The Truth Project was brought to
the Pentagon's attention by a "concerned citizen" who
dispatched an e-mail on Nov. 13, 2004. While not
offering specifics, Commander Gregory Hicks, a
Pentagon spokesman, said the e-mail "probably" was
forwarded to federal authorities by a local police
agency.
Wherever it came from, the e-mail ended up with the
FBI and then the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence
Group — the Defense Department's biggest, most
comprehensive counterespionage unit. Based at Fort
Meade, Md., and with agents in Orlando and Miami, the
intelligence group's main mission is protecting
military bases from infiltration.
It also enforces a little-used federal law that makes
it a crime to obstruct military recruitment during
times of war. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison.
Until Sept. 11, 2001, the 902nd focused on protecting
bases overseas. After the attacks, its anti-terror
mission expanded to U.S. soil.
Like other counterespionage groups, it keeps tabs on
potential threats across the nation, downloading the
information into a database called TALON (Threat and
Local Observation Notice), accessible to
law-enforcement agencies responsible for homeland
security.
Late last year, some of the electronic watch list was
obtained by an NBC News team.
The contents kicked a tripwire of public outrage. The
rag-tag Truth Project, along with a handful of other
once-obscure pacifist groups listed in the TALON
database, were thrust into the still-raging national
debate over domestic spying authorized by the Bush
administration.
The truth group's leader, who participated in
anti-Vietnam War sit-ins as a youth, ended up
testifying in Washington before a Democratic
congressional panel in January.
The ensuing political storm prompted the Pentagon to
purge its electronic databases of groups such as The
Truth Project.
"I'm all for the administration having all the powers
necessary to fight terror," said U.S. Rep. Robert
Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat who participated in
hearings on the issue. "But they don't have unbridled
authority to spy on Americans that had nothing
whatsoever to do with terror."
Fighting terrorism while respecting individual rights
is a difficult balance, said U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, a
Fort Lauderdale Republican whose district includes a
slice of Palm Beach County.
"As we increase our security, some of our civil rights
have to be given up," Shaw said. "One of the reasons
we're so vulnerable is we have such an open society.
It's a close call, but the bottom line is that our law
enforcers and our prosecutors have to use good
judgment and respect the rights of individuals."
The Truth Project is headed by Rich Hersh of Boca
Raton, a former writing professor at Florida Atlantic
University who spent the better part of his 59 years
acting on causes from napalm to the North American
Free Trade Agreement.
His graying hair shows how long it's been since he and
fellow protesters took over the administration
building at the University of Florida to protest the
Vietnam War.
"A lot of us thought, with Nixon out, we'd achieved
major victories," he said. "But the stuff just went
underground."
His latest project was inspired by his daughter,
Darcy, who came home excited after talking with U.S.
Marine recruiters at her high school about a career
flying fighter jets.
Hersh said he believed the recruiter hadn't given his
daughter the whole story. He also was troubled to
learn, from subsequent research, that the recruiters
were allowed to collect student addresses and phone
numbers from the schools.
Hersh and his group asked school district officials —
in polite letters, calls and in scheduled appointments
— for permission to present alternative viewpoints and
distribute "opt-out" forms to help students keep their
personal information from recruiters.
"We don't go in and dis the Army or the Navy," Hersh
said. "We just ask kids to think for themselves."
The group provided school lawyers with case law
documenting its right to do so. During a period of
months, at the superintendent's request, they met with
principals of 21 high schools to explain their effort
and to promise not to interfere with military
recruiters.
The talks were cordial, school concerns were addressed
and permission was granted and memorialized in
revisions to the district policy bulletin, Hersh said.
But even before the group unfolded its first table at
a high school, its existence had been posted on the
TALON database. Truth Project members learned that
from an NBC News producer in November 2005.
The data entry indicated that someone attended one of
their meetings and reported the group to the
government. That news prompted recollections that
their November 2004 meeting was attended by a muscular
man with a blond crew cut who no one saw before or
since. He said he was a nursing student.
"There is no such thing as privacy anymore; there is
secrecy," Hersh said.
TALON is made for speed, not painstaking verification.
The concept is to rush raw data to anti-terror
analysts so they can rocket through it for patterns
and connections.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who
ushered the database into anti-terror use, explained
it this way in 2003: "TALON reports are raw,
non-validated information which may or may not be
related to an actual threat, and by their very nature
may be fragmented or incomplete."
The Pentagon armed TALON with guidelines meant to
protect civil liberties. In addition to time limits on
holding such data, regulations require that "No
information shall be acquired about a person or
organization solely because of lawful advocacy of
measures in opposition to Government policy."
A Pentagon review this year found that TALON should be
used "only to report information regarding possible
international terrorist activity."
Defense officials hail TALON as a vital tool that has
proven itself. "It has detected international
terrorist interest in specific military bases and has
led to and supported counterterrorism investigations,"
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England wrote in a
memo to top Defense officials March 30.
The TALON controversy exploded at a time when
confidence in the president's handling of the Iraq war
was plunging and anger at government intrusion at home
was growing.
"Those law-abiding Americans with a different
philosophy from the administration found themselves on
the receiving end of a spying and surveillance effort
by the U.S. Department of Defense," Rep. Wexler said.
"If that doesn't make your blood run cold, I don't
know what would, as an American."
Said Rep. Shaw: "The first responsibility of federal
government is to protect security in our towns and
homes. I expect them to do their job — and I expect
them to do their job with absolute minimal
interference with civil rights."
Fla. Senator writes Rumsfeld
On Jan. 20, Democratic members of the House Judiciary
Committee held a hearing on the issue. Pointed
inquiries also came from such Democratic legislators
as Florida's Sen. Bill Nelson. "The military's
apparent expansion of domestic intelligence gathering
could lead to unprecedented invasions of the privacy
of lawful citizens simply for exercising their right
of free speech," Nelson wrote to Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
At the congressional hearing, Defense officials
conceded that none of the Truth Project's members had
known ties to Afghanistan, Pakistan or any other
terrorist-training hotbeds. Most didn't have passports
and had never been abroad. There was one exception: a
St. Petersburg resident they trained was a veteran of
the Korean War.
"At that time, none of us had even made a phone call
outside the country, except perhaps to Canada," Hersh
said.
Defense officials defended TALON's importance, but
agreed to purge 43 listings it found violated the
department's own regulations meant to protect civil
rights.
"Of all the reports reviewed, less than 2 percent were
later removed for various reasons," Pentagon spokesman
Hicks said. "I don't know about The Truth Project one
you're talking about, but if it did not have a foreign
terrorist threat nexus, which from what you say it
should not, it has been removed."
In any event, the TALON controversy helped the Truth
Project's cause. Its members have traveled to several
other Florida counties, as far as Hillsborough and
Pinellas, to teach their methods.
After the news broke, they got calls from groups as
far away as New York, Pennsylvania and Washington
state, asking for advice.
Hersh doesn't dismiss the importance of preventing
violence, but says fearful memories of Sept. 11 have
enabled the government to compromise individual
freedoms.
"As long as we have that dramatic image that we can
cling to, we don't have to really think about what's
going on here," he said. "It's important to find out
about these guys, but shouldn't the fact that you're
looking in a Quaker (F)riends meeting house suggest
that you might be looking in the wrong place?"
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